Change
by alectheta
Summary: Set during and after the drive back from Sandbrook in s02e04. Alec has heart troubles and is forced to make a decision.


Alec Hardy has spent more time in Ellie Miller's light blue family car lately than he cares to think about. He's good at that, not thinking about things. Locking them in a faraway corner of his mind. Sealing them in behind seemingly sturdy barriers. However, with increasing frequency, unbidden thoughts tend to come crashing through those walls and to the forefront of his mind at unpredictable times. Their momentum reminds him of the waves the spring storms throw against the pier in Broadchurch.

Great. He, who is uncomfortable being near any body of water that is bigger than a cup of tea, is thinking in sea metaphors. That bloody town. It's changing him. Being around Ellie Miller so much is changing him. Although, now that she's more and more turning into him, of all people, maybe not.

He casts a glance at her from the corner of his eye. She looks hardened, the few wrinkles cutting deeper into her skin than when he first met her. Her whole face is rigid. No wonder, going through a trial like that. Having a son that's not speaking to her anymore. The heartache that causes. He's familiar with that. The weeks, months when his daughter Daisy refused to pick up the phone when he called… the stabbing hurt he felt is something he's put up walls around. Better stuff some more bricks in the hole that just opened there, and quickly.

He's just glad he got to see Daisy today. God, she was different. Those eighteen months… he really did miss her change during that time. He seldom agrees with her mother Tess anymore, except on this, he does.

If he doesn't want to miss any more of Daisy's life, of how she's turning from the little girl that he remembers so vividly into a young woman, he needs to work out a way to visit her more often. He isn't allowed to drive anymore due to what's going on with his heart, and he certainly won't ask Miller to bring him up there only for personal reasons, so going by train will have to do. He'll take that upon himself despite his perpetual tiredness to see his daughter, to spend time with her.

Thinking about the hassles of such a long journey on public transport leaves him exhausted and breathless. Bloody hell, by now he's getting symptoms even imagining any kind of exertion. Panic grips his heart and it starts racing. He sucks in a breath. And another one. And another one, in rapid succession. Suddenly, the realization flashes through his already reeling mind that he might not even live long enough to start making an effort to see Daisy more often. His heart stumbles, takes forever to contract. It finally does and that first too hard beat after a too long pause sets off another round of rapid, feeble heartbeats, even faster than before. He can't breathe.

What if he doesn't survive this current bout of heart arrhythmia and never sees Daisy again, not even once? His vision is getting blurry at the edges. Black spots dance in the narrow part of the world outside of his own body that he is still distantly aware of.

„Alec! Alec, are you all right? What's going on with you?"

Ellie Miller's agitated voice cuts through the whirlwind in his mind. He tries to turn his face into her direction, but he can only manage to not collapse just yet. He struggles to keep breathing, to will his heart rate down, to stay conscious. Until what happens, he can't remember. Getting ahold of any of the thoughts that pass through his fading consciousness feels like trying to catch clouds. Pills. Right, until he gets his medication out from wherever it is and into his failing body.

The car swerves and his limp form drifts towards the window to his left and then into the other direction, towards the driver's side. He can't bring himself to sit up straight after they've come to a halt. Hanging askew in the seatbelt, he closes his eyes. He can't see much anymore anyways and he's so, so tired. Panicking and tired at the same time. How odd. He feels warm hands on his chest, fumbling around in his shirt pocket for his pills. Ellie. She's close enough that he can smell her. His other senses have become oversensitive, now that his eyes are closed. The scent of washing powder that emanates from her clothes overwhelms him and he chokes.

„Where do you keep your goddamn pills? You do have them on you, right? Please, don't be your usual stupid self, have some on you…" One hand leaves his body and dips into the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

„Thank god! Alec! Alec, can you hear me? Open your eyes, look at me!"

With as much strength as he can possibly muster, he forces his eyes open and stares directly into Ellie Miller's, only centimeters from his face. He doesn't expend the energy it would cost him to lean back, away from her, to get her out of his personal space.

„Can you manage to swallow your pills? How many do you need?"

„Two," he chokes out. To his enormous relief, her eyes finally leave his and he hears the characteristic rustling sound of pills being popped out of a blister pack and suddenly he's got Ellie Miller's fingers on his tongue. A moment later, they are being replaced by a water bottle touching his lips. She's staring at him again. He stares back when she slowly lifts the bottle and he takes as deep a breath as he can manage. Then, he holds it when water rushes into his mouth and the pills float from his tongue. There's a brief moment of increasing panic when it's not him that controls the amount of water coming in, but he manages to hold on to what little control he has left over his mental reactions and in that moment, Ellie tilts the bottle back down. He swallows with effort, but successfully.

Ellie watches as Alec pulls himself up and slumps against the backrest, exhausted. For a moment, she thought he wouldn't make it. She already had her mobile phone out, the emergency number ready for dialing, but then he did open his eyes when she prodded him to and somehow she got the pills into him as well. He groans, but it sounds more like relief than agony. He takes a shuddering breath and although still too fast, his respiratory rate appears to be slowing down after that. She reaches across Alec and takes his clammy left wrist in one hand and then feels for his pulse with three fingers of the other. It's still going fast, but she can feel every beat distinctly. No fluttering, no stumbling.

On the soft shoulder of the road, Ellie paces up and down rapidly in front of the open door on Alec's side of the car. Five paces up, turn around, five paces down, turn around, and again. Once Alec visibly recovered, the panic Ellie had forcefully pushed aside while taking care of him threatened to overwhelm her. She had to get out of the car, find an outlet for all the nervous energy that isn't needed anymore, a structure to pour it into.

Bloody hell, he almost died on her. Again.

Grapes. She's going to give him so many fucking non-seedless grapes as she can find in the whole of Wessex once he's back to his usual pigheaded self. „Calm down, Ellie," she mumbles to herself. After all, besides the members of her own family - she tries not to think about the one notable exception - she's the only one still talking to herself when Alec's not around. Somehow, that thought sobers her up and the remaining panic leaves her. She turns towards him and he's watching her, observing her, not just vacantly staring ahead as he was twenty minutes ago. After a moment, he looks away. Then, with obvious effort, he turns his not quite as pale, but tired looking face back towards her. He looks her in the eye. She can see how he wants to pull his gaze away, how the muscles surrounding his eyes twitch to the side, then back towards her, than to the side again. He doesn't actually look away, though.

„Thanks, Miller," comes his gruff voice from where he's still sitting on the passenger seat, the loosened seatbelt hanging over his left shoulder. And then, after a tiny pause, and quietly: „Thank you for helping me, Ellie."

„Helping," she silently snorts to herself while looking down into her former boss's comically wide open, brown eyes that stare at her unblinkingly from his upturned face and thinks, „I saved your bloody life, you wanker." At the same time, warmth spreads around her heart at the earnestness with which he said it. At the effort he took to make and keep eye contact although he's far from well and despite how hard it is for him to do so when it's about something personal, even when he's in a better condition.

„Anytime."

There's something else she wants to say, but even after this, it seems too pathetic. Too emotional. It bubbles up her throat anyway and she blurts out, „After all, you're about the only friend I have at the moment."

He stares at her for another second, then looks away.

„I'm sorry."

„What? Why?"

„For being such an unreliable…," it takes some effort to get the word out, „Friend. One that has a tendency to almost die on you."

Suddenly, she's angry again. Why can't the bloody idiot not just get the damn surgery he so obviously needs?

„There's a way to prevent that from happening again, you know."

He doesn't answer.

„I am talking about the pacemaker surgery."

„I know."

„Yeah, well?", she prods him.

Alec drags a hand down his face. When he reaches the beard on his chin, he pulls on it and says towards her feet on the dirty grass, „It's difficult."

„What is?" Leave it to Ellie Miller to not let him get away with that.

„Finding a date for the procedure everyone involved agrees on. Besides…,"

„Besides," he starts again, and the rest comes out in a rush before the courage to say it aloud leaves him, „They're not sure I'll survive the operation."

„Yeah, well, you bloody well won't survive much longer without it either, that much is obvious." It's harsh, but after what just happened, she feels certain it's true, and although Ellie doesn't want to cause Alec even more pain, she's desperate to get through to him. After all, he is her only real friend at the moment, however the hell that happened. She's not ready to lose him just yet. The fact that she actually thinks that she would miss the stubborn git if he were gone leaves her exasperated. Never in a million years would she have thought that it would ever come to this on that first day they met on the beach. Over Danny's dead body.

Uh oh, Ellie. Better stop it right here. Stop thinking about it, lest it all comes back, Joe, the trial. She focusses on Alec instead.

„Are you feeling alright for us to continue driving?"

When he nods, she walks around the car, gets in, buckles herself in, waits for Alec's seat belt to click, and starts the car. Routine. Practiced motions. They hold her together.

The steady humming of the engine is the only sound, the sole variations coming from changes in its pitch that result from Ellie's infrequent gear changes. Alec stares out of the window on the passenger side, the greens and browns of the darkening countryside flying by unseen by him.

He really doesn't want to ponder what happened. Two episodes in as many days. Ignoring it, moving on, would be far easier. He's a man grounded in logic though. It's one of the reasons that he became a detective, after all. He deals in facts and the logical connections between them. Fact is, although he hates to admit it, he almost died, and not for the first time. Extrapolation from the past tells him it won't have happened for the last time either. Factoring in the probability of him being so fortunate as today when it happens again leads him to the conclusion that one day, he won't be so lucky. From which, in turn, it follows that if he keeps going like this, he'll die in the probably not so distant future.

Which means he won't be able to watch Daisy grow up. Ironically, this thought was what triggered it all. He's caught in a vicious circle. Reason tells him that he won't be able to get off the deadly ride unless he changes something.

Actively.

Ignoring everything, focusing on something else entirely, would be so much easier. Has always been so much easier. So much less scary. Oh, look at that, Alec (how he hates that name) Hardy, a grown man, scared. He scoffs at himself. Not a thought he likes to ponder. Brushing it all aside becomes even more appealing.

They spend the rest of the drive to Broadchurch in silence.

Damp cold seeps into his suit pants from the sand below. After hours surrounded by the familiar, lived-in smell of the Miller's — Ellie's, he corrects himself — car, the thought of spending the few hours left of the night inside appeared unbearable. Although he hates the salty twang of the air, it's cool and fresh and so much easier to breathe.

The cloth of his pants presses down uncomfortably on the skin on top of his bent knees. His back is growing cold, but the tight circle of his arms that firmly encases his legs keeps some of his body warmth within the ball that Alec Hardy has curled himself into. From afar, he's just a dark grey spot against the washed out beige of the cliffs in the pale light of beginning dawn.

He's come here to think. By the time Ellie dropped him off at the small blue house in Broadchurch that he's staying in, he had resolved to at least decide right now whether he's going to actively start fighting for his life or to keep ignoring and avoiding everything to do with his, he swallows, well, condition. Whether he'll let things run their course, however that may turn out.

But he can't do that. He knows how it would turn out. Once he's figured something out, he isn't able to disregard the conclusion he's reached and what it means for any further decisions.

It all appears even clearer in the piercing wind blowing in from the sea. The repetitive whooshing sound of the waves breaking not far from his feet helps his mind to once more follow the line of argument he's established since he sat down here.

Does he care to stay alive? For himself, maybe not, with a failed marriage, a job he isn't any good at while there's one he would be, was, good at. One that he isn't allowed to do anymore. Not in the state he's in, at least.

For being able to watch Daisy grow up? Yes.

A resounding yes. And frankly, it's easy from here on.

To watch Daisy grow up, he needs to stay alive for at least a few more years.

To stay alive for at least a few more years, he needs to get a pacemaker put in.

To get a pacemaker put in, he needs to have major surgery.

And survive it. This is the part that intimidates him the most. The one that made him push the appointment back as far as possible. The one where there's no definitive outcome. If he doesn't survive, he's back to square one, to not being able to watch his daughter grow up.

However, if he does, he might be able to do just that. So he'll go with that for now, for the sake of argument.

To get the procedure, he needs an appointment. A date when it's going to happen. A date as close to now as possible. He would never have thought he'd agree with the NHS on this, ever. How things change. Now he wishes he hadn't pushed for the appointment to be rescheduled to a later date. But then, he did try to phone the South Wessex NHS Trust as they advised him to do in their letter when his symptoms increased both in frequency and severity. Fat lot of good that did. They referred him to his GP, as if he were equipped to deal with something the NHS found worrying enough to recommend that the procedure go ahead as soon as possible. Getting them to stop treating him like a ping pong ball starts to look like an unsurmountable obstacle. Bloody doctors. „Do as we say or you'll die." How about „Try to do as we say and we'll do everything we can to keep you from doing so?" He doesn't have time for that kind of game. He'll have to get through to them somehow. For once, he's thankful for his stubbornness. He'll wear them down with sheer perseverance, if need be. If he doesn't just run from it all.

Perpetual disdain at everything and everyone, anger, and yelling to avoid dealing with the problems life threw at them is all his parents were able to be a role model of. There was that, and his mother's silent suffering that he hates to see duplicated in himself now. That's not what he wants to pass on to his daughter. How to not deal with the issues life confronts you with, how to let other people and life itself walk all over you. Daisy's young, she's got a future, at least he hopes so, and he wants to show her a more active and positive attitude towards life than his parents displayed in front of him.

However, he'll have to be the one to live this attitude first in order to pass it on. To even be able to pass it on. How ironic is that.

A way of living a life that feels so foreign to him that he's physically shaken by it. There's no one to witness the repulsed look that crosses his face but the seagulls that have taken to gliding above the waves in the orange glow of dawn. For a moment, he wonders if he can do it. If there's enough fight left in him to turn his own attitude and years of living within its confines around.

Ever since he's reached his conclusion, however, he isn't willing to give in so easily anymore. If he can't do it on his own, he'll have to enlist help. He scrunches up his face at that. As a child, all he ever got in turn for asking for help with something, anything really, was scorn, so he just stopped asking at some point. It's been so long he can't even remember when it happened. Even now, when he needs someone to do something for him, all he can manage is bark orders at them. It doesn't even matter if the setting is professional or personal. This is not going to work anymore either, at least not on the personal level he's dealing with now. He'll have to change that as well to be any kind of useful example for his daughter.

Asking for help nicely. Admitting his own helplessness to someone else. He feels completely and utterly out of his depth at that thought. The only thing that helps him to keep from giving up right then and there is the thought of Daisy. It sparks his ever present stubbornness into life. If getting himself to push for a timely appointment for surgery in spite of his trepidations means he needs to ask someone else for help, and nicely at that, he'll do it. If that's what's needed to avoid his untimely demise, he'll go through with it, the blow to what little is left of his self esteem be damned.

Thinking of help, little scenes involving Ellie Miller spring to his mind. Ellie, holding out a thermos for him that he hadn't asked for. Because it was bound to be a cold, long day at work. Bringing him food that again, he hadn't asked for. Because she had noticed that he hadn't eaten anything in hours. Inviting him to dinner just after he had irked her yet again, because being nice to the new guy in town to make him more comfortable is what people do. Even her infuriating tendency to assure the people they were questioning that everything was going to be alright speaks of her impulse to help others, to make them feel better. Never mind that she's saved his life twice so far.

He unclenches his cold, folded hands, rests each forearm atop one of his knees and lets his shoulders drop as far as his tense muscles permit.

Asking Ellie for help only seems natural. Deciding that she's the one he trusts with this, the one who knows him well enough to not let him get away with avoiding anything to do with the surgery, is easy. Going through with actually asking her — as clearly and directly as he can possibly manage, and out loud, and in a polite way — is going to be the one challenge he'll have to go through on his own first. Assuming she agrees to help him with what comes after that.

With a sigh, he lets his legs fall to one side and then pushes himself up to kneel in the sand. He rests like that for a moment, the warmth of the morning sun welcome on the taut muscles of his back. After a while, he drags himself up to a standing position and follows his long, too skinny shadow towards town.

Ellie's face feels hot. Despite the warmth that she can't immediately place and the light shimmering through her closed eyelids, she refuses to give up sleep. It feels like minutes ago that she collapsed into bed, utterly exhausted from the kind of day she'd had. As if any of her days of late weren't exhausting. The past few ones were excruciating even by her current standards. She wills herself to be pulled under by sleep again to escape it all, past and future alike.

The jangling ring tone of her mobile phone pierces her eardrums. She doesn't want to deal with it. With anything. With her sister, moaning about some problem or other she's having while looking after Fred. With Lucy pointedly not talking about Tom. With another one of Hardy's impossible demands. With Jocelyn chastising her, listing all the wrong choices she's made that complicate her work.

She pulls the covers over her head to escape it all, the ringing phone, everything she doesn't want to deal with, the light and the heat and the _life_ streaming in from the window.

The ringing stops.

Ellie breathes a sigh of relief.

The ringing starts again.

Ellie sighs.

After another moment, she pulls herself up and reaches for the phone that is insistently buzzing on the night stand.

Upon seeing Alec's number glowing on the display, she groans and greets him with a hoarse and disgruntled „What is it now?"

Silence.

Ellie's sleep-jumbled thoughts slowly sort themselves into a working order and panic rises within her in an instant.

„Alec? Are you alright? Are you having another episode?"

He chuckles, chuckles, at the other end of the line. That bastard.

It didn't sound humorous at all though. It takes her still sleep-addled brain a while to make sense of everything that's so suddenly pouring into it. Nervous. That's what it was. What he appears to be.

„What's the matter, Alec? You wouldn't just call me to wish me a good morning. So what's going on? Why are you pulling me out of my well-earned sleep at this time of the day?", she demands.

„Miller, I… No. Let me try again." He takes a deep breath. Before what little courage he was able to summon leaves him, he says, „Would you be willing to help me with something? Something that would mean a lot to me?"

Ellie's first thought is, „Oh no, not again. What reckless plan does he have up his sleeve this time?"

Then the odd wording sinks in. It doesn't sound like him at all. Something is very much not right.

„Excuse me, sir?"

„Don't call me sir, I'm not your boss anymore. I'm just, someone, you know, just… a… friend… asking another friend, for, for help." His words tumble out of the speaker in a jumbled heap.

All that registers with Ellie at first is „asking for help," „friend," and the oddly polite way he put it. Well, odd when it comes from him, anyway.

Alec Hardy wants her, Ellie Miller, to help him. That's not what's new there.

Alec Hardy is _asking_ her, Ellie Miller, for help.

Alec is _asking_ her, his _friend Ellie_, for help.

Again, she comes to the conclusion that something isn't quite right.

„What's gotten into you?" It comes out sounding a lot angrier than she intended. She's confused, not angry. How could she be annoyed with him when he's being so strangely polite for a change? It's just disconcerting, is all.

„I, ugh, I shouldn't have done that. Said that. Asked you that. Woken you up," he hastily backpedals. „I'll leave you alone."

„No no no no no!", Ellie cuts into his rambling. „Don't you dare hang up on me now!" After a short pause, she adds „I want to know what's going on. What's bothering you," in a friendlier tone.

„I, um, I've got a problem."

„One? A whole plethora of problems. And a heart condition on top of them, more like it," she snorts. She regrets it the moment it's out there. She didn't mean to be sarcastic.

„Sorry, Alec, I'm so, so sorry. I didn't mean that."

„It's ok."

„No, it's not."

„Leave it, Ellie. Do you want me to tell you what's going on or not?" She can feel his exasperation, mixed with… anxiety?

At her quiet „Yes, please go on, tell me. You said you needed help with something?", Alec steels himself yet again to put it all out there. Hopefully he'll get it over with this time without her interrupting him before he's even properly started.

She's silent, apparently willing to listen intently to what he's got to say.

So he says it. That he needs someone to help him. To keep him in line. To prevent him from running from the surgery and its possible negative outcome. That he thought she might be the one able to help him because she's gotten to know him well enough to see through all of his diversion tactics. Because she isn't afraid of giving him a piece of her mind when she thinks he needs to hear it. That he, he trusts her. That he's doing this for Daisy, well, for her and for himself, really, because he wants to be able to watch her grow up. The moment he says that, it strikes him that he's saying this to a mother whose son refuses to talk to her. He instantly feels bad and chastises himself for being so caught up in his own problems and their solution that he completely forgot about the insensitivity of it all. The thought cuts off his rambling explanation and he reverts to his default mode: silence.

From which Ellie's resolved „I'll do it. I'll keep you in line, check up on your progress and I won't let you get away with anything that doesn't get you closer to having the procedure done and having it done as soon as possible." rings out all the louder.

In his bafflement, he stays on autopilot. Which means: more silence.

„Alec!", Ellie groans.

He swallows. He knows he ought to say _something_, preferably thank her in some way, but nothing comes out.

Oh, shut it. He's decided to change his attitude so completely, at least when it comes to Ellie, he might as well get over himself and start now.

„Thank you." It comes out gruff, as per usual. He's not impressed with himself. After clearing his throat, he tries again. „Thank you for agreeing to help me, Ellie." Deep breath. „It means a lot to me." There. He's gone all softie. He isn't entirely sure that's something he ought to aspire to, but he's made his decision to try and be more pleasant, so he's going to stick with it.

„What's up with the unexpected politeness?", Ellie wants to know. „Did you think I would've refused to help you otherwise?"

„No. I just thought I might try and change that as well, as unbelievable as it sounds. Maybe."

„Good luck with that," Ellie chuckles, the mirth apparent in her voice.

To Ellie's utter astonishment, Alec jokes, „It might prove to be even harder to change my attitude surrounding social interactions than to manage to stay alive," his relief at her agreeing to help him apparent. It renders her speechless for a moment, until she remembers the incident that elicited his „Dirty Brian" comment. It feels like it happened ages ago, to another person.

„Oh, um, and, Ellie?" Alec says, his voice uncertain.

„Yeah?" she responds after the moment it takes her mind to come back from the past.

„Good morning."

To her own surprise, she laughs and shoots back, „Good morning, sir!"

„How many times do I have to say this, I'm not your boss anymore, Ellie!"

After that, they fall into an easy banter that is a welcome reprieve from the pile of shit they've dealt with, especially over the past few days. What she had thought was silent grumpiness that reverted to sarcasm if Alec was prodded long enough for him to have to say anything at all was actually an endearing, humorous snarkiness that comes close to her own. More than enough reason for her to help him stay alive, for her own sake as much as for his and his daughter's. She really needs a friend, even if it's a perpetually unkempt, socially inept, outwardly grumpy Scot with a heart condition that stole her job. That bastard.

While still on the phone with said friend, she gets up to get dressed. She needs to go pick up Fred. And buy grapes.


End file.
